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Friday, March 28, 2014

A couple of years ago I acquired three late Tiger Ie tanks for a sweet price. I painted them up and added them to the collection but I really had no idea what to do with them. To make matters worse I was not playing any late war armies and as a result they never made it to the table. With the release of the Bridge by Bridge supplement for Flames of War I found a use for these tanks as well as a reason to buy even more - Kampfgruppe Hummel.

The core of this army list are Tiger I tanks. But they are not your usual killer Tigers that FoW is know for. No Tiger Ace skills, no wide tracks but they do get Unreliable and Confident Trained. The tanks are only 149 points each, which means you can have lots of them but the lack of abilities means that they are just tanks. In late war armor 9,8,2 is not really very good. Even with these drawbacks the idea of fielding a company of ten Tigers was too much to resist!

Here we have the next three Tigers for this force. These are all Battlefront models. I would have gone with Plastic Soldier Company if I did not already have three BF models. The BF models are pretty good but they are starting to show their age (as are nearly all the BF metal/resin models).

The company commander is the Michael Wittman model from Battlefront. I was really disappointed in this model. I was really hoping that this would be a variant of the standard Tiger I model but it is actually the same one you get in the blister. For this model I used the commander figure from the old GE072 Tiger I from BF (this is the old Kursk Tiger that is OOP).

With all the hatches open there is no doubt as to who the boss is. The only problem with modeling the tank this way is that it is hard to turn the turret - but it looks cool! On this tank I tried to model the front fender extension in the up position. This was a pain but it turned out OK.

The next tank was modeled with no fenders. It turns out that this was extremely rare for Tigers. It seems that these tanks were really babied. Since this force if for late war and comprised of salvaged tanks it seemed appropriate. If anything the other tanks are in too good of shape but I plan to use these for several different armies so it is all good.

The last tank in this set has lots of extra track section added. This may be a little a-historic but I did find examples of this (just not all on one tank). With the power of the late war guns it seem logical that any extra protection would be welcome. The 17lb gun really makes short work of these tanks.

Next for this project are four more Tigers. The plan was to do these as the early Tiger I and paint some for Eastern front and at least one for Tunisia. I am thinking that I might get one more of the late Tiger and then build a couple of franken-tigers as these were very common with KG Hummel. These are Tigers with a mix of early and late features reflecting their cobbled together nature.

It never ceases to amaze me how good my models look in person (IMO) and how bad they look in high resolution photos. Just proof that my camera is better than my eye.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

OK, it is late March and I just realized that I have not posted in nearly 2 months. I really try and post 3-4 times a month mainly as a way to keep me motivated. And therein lies the problem, lack of motivation. It really shocks me to realize that I have yet to paint (completely) a single miniature this year. It is not as if I have been doing nothing hobby related, I just haven't been painting and posting.

So what have I been doing? Well, February was spent with Bolt Action. From the end of the Shifting sands Kursk event until the beginning of this month I played lots of Bolt Action. I started by doing some test games in preparation for Gathering in the Desert 2 day tournament. Then there was the event itself followed the next weekend by yet another BA tournament.

The Gathering event was a blast and was really one of the best weekend's gaming ever. I went into the event with the idea of taking lots of photographs and making notes of each game. I planned to do several posts just on this event but, as it turns out, I managed to take pictures of the tables only. I have included three of the best in this post but they were all top notch.

Randy also did a couple of videos of each day's happenings. Day 1 and Day 2

All of this Bolt Action action has done a couple of things. First, it is time to step back and play something else for a while. The plan was to get in some SAGA and then back to Flames of War. That has not panned out and we just jumped back into Flames. We have a new player that Tim and I are helping to get into the game so we have been doing small, 600 point battles. This is a great way to learn the game and refresh the rules. The other result of the Bolt Action action is I have decided to build my Perry 8th Army figures and fully flesh out an army. They are just too good to ignore and the Perry's have been adding lots of cool stuff to the line.

Time for a confession, one of the biggest reason for the lack of hobby progress and updates is due to the evil of video games. Just after the first of the year I started playing Fallout New Vegas. As a huge fan of Fallout 3 I just had to play this game. Turns out that it has managed to eat about 200 hours of my life that I will never get back and I have nothing to show for the investment (other than my PS3 trophies). Please, please, please stay away from the video games. They will destroy your hobby life.

Then there are the games that have been retired. Not all of these are bad. In fact some are really great. The reasons for retirement are varied.

Wings of Glory

Kings of War

The Great WarEmpire of the DeadClash of EmpiresLord of the Rings:SBGWarhammer Ancient BattlesBattleground World War 2Arc of FireJohnny Reb IIICrossfireRules of EngagementRate of FireLegends of the High SeasNecromundaWaterlooLegends of the Old West